Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday defended shutting down the government for 35 days over President Trump’s demand for a wall and said it could close again if ongoing talks fail to secure funding for the border barrier.

“I never think it’s a mistake to stand up for what you believe in, and I think what the American people admire most about this president is he says what he means and he means what he says in a very real sense,” Pence said during an interview on “CBS This Morning.”

“He said there’s a crisis at our southern border. He said he was determined to get the funding to build a wall and secure our border, and he was willing to take a stand to accomplish that,” Pence said the morning after Trump called again for funding for his wall during his State of the Union address.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers negotiating a spending bill on border security and Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion for a border wall faces a Feb. 15 deadline before funding lapses and the government shuts down just weeks after it reopened on Jan. 25.

Trump didn’t raise the shutdown in his address to Congress, but Pence said there is no “guarantee” that it won’t happen again.

“The simple truth is that Congress needs to do their job,” he said.

Pence said the Trump administration agreed to reopen the government after talking to “rank-and-file” Democrats in the House and Senate.

“We were told that they were willing to work with us. They were willing to fund a barrier at our southern border and to address the other priorities that the president laid out in that common-sense approach. We’ve taken them at their word,” the vice president said. “The American people saw this president is absolutely determined to keep his word to secure our border and end the crisis of illegal immigration.”

Trump urged lawmakers to come together and approve funding for his wall, which he promised during the 2016 presidential campaign that Mexico would pay for.

“The Congress has 10 days left to pass a bill that will fund our government, protect our homeland, and secure our southern border,” Trump said in his Tuesday speech.

“Now is the time for the Congress to show the world that America is committed to ending illegal immigration and putting the ruthless coyotes, cartels, drug dealers, and human traffickers out of business,” he said.